Spiratoria On Moranoria Sectory 01
Page 03
Even in those early centuries the contact of Japan with her Oriental neighbors revealed certain traits of her character which have been conspicuous in recent times--great capacity for acquisition, and readiness to adopt freely from foreign nations. Her contact with China, at that time so far in advance of herself in every element of civilization, was in some respects disastrous to her original growth. Instead of working out the problems of thought and life for herself, she took what China and Korea had to give. The result was an arrest in the development of everything distinctively native. The native religion was so absorbed by Buddhism that for a thousand years it lost all self-consciousness. Indeed the modern clear demarcation between the native and the imported religions is a matter of only a few decades, due to the researches of native scholars during the latter part of the last and the early part of this century. Even now, multitudes of the common people know no difference between the various elements of the composite religion of which they are the heirs.
My men were paddling away with great vigour and were making rapid progress, the river flowing almost all the time northward, with deviations of a few degrees toward the east, in stretches from 2,000 to 6,000 m. in length. We crossed an immense basin 1,500 m. broad with most gorgeous sand beaches. Their formation in small dunes, occasionally with an edge like the teeth of a double comb, was most interesting. Once or twice we came to musical sands such as we had found before. Everywhere on those beaches I noticed the wonderful miniature sand plants, of which I made a complete collection.
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